Resuscitating the dead audience

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Resuscitating the dead audience
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Purpose of this Lecture

• What are the common mistakes teachers make when
  they lecture?
• How do students learn from lectures?
• What can a teacher do to help students learn more
  from lectures?

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Mission Impossible

• You have been asked to give a lecture on the
  mating habits of the blue footed booby to a
  group of ornithologists, half way through your
  talk you look up and notice

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The audience seems to be less then enthralled
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You persevere

• Yikes,
• you have quite a few slides left(50),
• plus a
• wonderful little video clip
• (if you could just find it),
• So you pick up the pace a little (ok a lot)
• only to look out upon the audience
• and see

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Morbid state
Has this ever happened to you?
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As a member of an audience, have you ever

• found yourself daydreaming in a lecture?
• found yourself doodling?
• Found yourself making lists of things to do?
• Imagined the lecturer naked

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5 Common Lecturing Mistakes

• Failing to prepare adequately
• Trying to cover too much material
• Being perceived as disorganized or unclear
• Displaying distracting or poor delivery
• Inadvertently encouraging student passivity
  ignoring student feedback

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Can the bad presentation be prevented ?
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How do people learn from lectures?
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What happens over time.
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Information-Processing Model of Learning and
Memory
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(3) What can we do to help students learn?

• Improve lecture preparation
• Improve lecture transmission
• Clarity
• Attention and interest
• Thought Provoking
• Improve student reception
• Easy to Take Notes
• Relevant to course
• Improve student output

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Improve lecture preparation

• know your subject, know your audience

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What are the step to follow when preparing a
lecture?

• Choose topic be specific
• Free associate - brainstorm
• Produce a working title
• Set out a structure (purpose, content,
  organization)
• mind-map

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Lecture preparation

• 5. Read (caution)
• Set out the lecture on a summary sheet write
  out your talk
• Prepare the opening
• .Now go to computer/powerpoint (avoid textbook
  overview)
• 8. Give the lecture rehearse

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(3) What can we do to help students learn?

• Improve lecture preparation
• Improve lecture transmission
• Clarity
• Attention and interest
• Thought Provoking
• Improve student reception
• Easy to Take Notes
• Relevant to course
• Improve student output

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A good presentation has CLARITY

• Dependent on knowing what you want to say to
  whom,
• transmitting the explanation and then
• checking the understanding.
• Clarity means a clear structure

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Clarity

• Structure of lecture is obvious
• Purpose
• explicitly state the 3-5 main take home points
• Content (facts)
• Organization of facts
• Students learn more when you put more time into?

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Less is better
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You are asked to give a talk from 1000 1050
am

• You will need
• How many minutes for your presentation?
• How many minutes for questions and answers?
• How many slides for your talk?
• How many lines per slide?
• How many words per line?

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After 2 weeks
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the only way to get 100 retention

• is by hearing, seeing, doing, smelling, feeling,
  tasting, inhaling, injecting and purchasing on
  credit
• (R. Berk, Professor are from Mars.
• Students are from Snickers)

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How do you improve the clarity?

• Organization of explanation is the most important
  
• (who, what, where, when, why, how)
• summarizing the key points of each section of an
  explanation and then examining their order and
  links
• Use signposts, frames, foci and or links

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Lack of clarity

• Learners cannot identify the main ideas
• No summaries are used
• including previews, internal summaries, and final
  summaries
• Transitions are weak or nonexistent
• The organizational pattern is too complex to
  follow.

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(3) What can we do to help students learn?

• Improve lecture preparation
• Improve lecture transmission
• Clarity
• Attention and interest
• Thought Provoking
• Improve student reception
• Easy to Take Notes
• Relevant to course
• Improve student output

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Getting Attention

• Explain why the content is important for the
  learners to know
• Show your own interest and commitment to the
  topic
• Use real life examples, tell stories
• Use an opening question/present a clinical
  problem

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Maintaining Interest

• use problems or cases throughout
• share clinical anecdotes to make the material
  real
• introduce mini breaks
• change the activity level every 20 minutes
• use interactive lecturing techniques

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Interactive lecturing?

• Use interactive lecturing to increase student
  participation

Learner
Teacher
Material
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Interactive lecturing strategies

• In a three-some discuss what interactive
  lecturing strategies you have used or observed.

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Interactive lecturing

• Questioning the audience questions to and from
  the audience. Dont wait till the end.
• Brainstorming
• Surveying the class
• Quizzes or short answers
• Phil Donahue style
• Using audience responses (flash cards)

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Interactive lecturing

• Innovative case applications
• Debates, reaction panels and guests
• Role plays, simulations games
• Think-share-pair/dyad, triads, buzz groups
• Students summarize key points and material
• Written material handouts!

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Lecture Make-Over

• Review the PowerPoint presentation of a lecture
  and suggest ways to improve the lecture.

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(3) What can we do to help students learn?

• Improve lecture preparation
• Improve lecture transmission
• Clarity
• Attention and interest
• Thought Provoking
• Improve student reception
• Easy to Take Notes
• Relevant to course
• Improve student output

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Easy to Take Notesstudents often have to make
a choice between

• attempting to understand what is being said in
  lectures

• attempting to record what is being said

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Easy to take notes

• Note taking handouts
• Advantages
• Assist in organization of key concepts
• can influence note taking
• Promote the retention of information
• Remove pressure to cover everything
• higher student test scores,
• students appreciate them,

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Handouts

• Types of handouts
• Outlines 1 page summary
• Interactive handouts skeletal notes
• Key information handouts distillate
• Full handouts complete transcription
• Tasks and problems handouts

Critical to its success is the use of handout
in class.
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Easy to Take Notes

• Interactive handouts contain key points, diagrams
  and a skeletal outline of the presentation.
• room for students to add in their own notes and
  complete the handout.
• aids student recall better than a full handout.

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(3) What can we do to help students learn?

• Improve lecture preparation
• Improve lecture transmission
• Clarity
• Attention and interest
• Thought Provoking
• Improve student reception
• Easy to Take Notes
• Relevant to course
• Improve student output

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4 Take Home Points

• Focus on the organization of your talk
• Reduce the content to a reasonable amount less
  is really more!
• Use interactive lecturing techniques through out
  your lecture q20 min
• Use hand-outs to the students advantage

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References

• How not to give a lecture. Smith R. BMJ
  20003211570-1571 ( 23 December )Go to
  http//bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/321/72
  76/1570
• The AMEE Medical Education Guide No. 22
  Refreshing lecturing a guide for lectures.
  Brown, G. Manogue, M. Medical Teacher, Vol. 23
  No. 3, 2001 p231-243 for a great overview coupled
  with practical suggestions.